Definition of a company man? Calbert Wright, who’s been working at Ford’s Chicago Heights plant since 1963

He didn't think he'd stick around.

When Calbert Wright began work at the Ford Motor Company's Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights in 1963, the factory was a noisy, smelly, smoky hellscape with a leaky roof.

And it was hot: 100 degrees on the production line.

"Ooo," Wright said. "No fans. Water fountains were rare, very rare."

Plus Black workers such as himself were given the hardest duties.

"The first month, I didn't like it," remembers Wright, 85, "I said, 'I'm not going to stay here'. They had us stacking steel. We couldn't touch no presses. All we could do is stack stock. They were trying to work us like Hebrew slaves."

But stay he did.

When Wright began work at the age of 23 at Ford, John F. Kennedy was president. Henry Ford still ran the business — albeit Henry Ford II, grandson of the man who founded the automobile manufacturer in 1903.

That means Wright, who prowls the floor today checking that workers on the line have enough parts to keep the robots busy — and takes their place when they go on bathroom breaks — has worked for Ford a little more than half the 123 years since the company sold its first car, a two-cylinder, two-passenger Model A, in red, the only color available, for $850 to Ernest Pfennig, a dentist on Clybourn Avenue.

Wright had come up from Mississippi when he was 11, and his voice is rich with Southern drawl. He had an uncle at Ford's Torrence Avenue assembly plant, and got a job at Chicago Stamping.

Why did he stay?

"There weren't jobs paying like this," he said, laughing: $1.40 an hour. "Big money."

He had a wife, Thelma — now married 65 years — and an infant son to consider. And things were changing.

"[Martin Luther] King, plus the union, made everybody be classified," Wright said. Conditions improved. He moved up from stacking steel. "That's why I stayed so long."

Wright's 63-year tenure isn't even the longest of Ford's 177,000 workers — that would be Art Porter, 86, who joined Chicago Stamping in 1961.

Their longevity is especially amazing when you realize how frequently workers change employers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average worker at a private factory like Ford works 4.9 years before leaving.

Wright has put in a dozen times that, and seen many changes.

One of the biggest is automation. When robots were first introduced, in the 1970s, it wasn't clear whether they'd be a benefit.

"They were throwing parts all over," Wright said. "They were dangerous. They couldn't control it. They were putting welds in the wrong place, blowing holes."

Better with robot help

Gradually, the machines improved.

"They got it right now," Wright said. "They come out better with the robots. They put the welds in the same place. When they manpower with a gun, they put one here, one there."

Walking through the plant with Wright now, it's cool and almost quiet, except for the faint panoply of clanks and hisses. Only occasionally do you spy a person, shielded by machinery.

"Them robots came in and knocked all those people out," Wright said. "Each line would have 18 people, Now they got three. When I hired in, they had 6,500 people in this plant."

Now Chicago Stamping employs 1,100.

Wright works on one of four "door lines" — creating doors for Explorers and Lincoln Aviators.

"I'm a utility man," he said. "You go around the line, instruct people how to do the job. Keep the line running."

The best way to envision the factory floor is a series of stations, where robots work in a central core, moving like large, jerky birds, grabbing raw steel doors, sending off sheets of sparks as they apply welds affixing window channels, while several workers feed the parts to them. Two buttons control two lights at each station — yellow, signaling the worker needs more parts, and green, signaling repair is required.

A simple system, but one that has to be followed. This is where Wright comes in.

"You have to stay up on 'em, because, if they run out of parts, you'd think they'd hit that light?" said Wright. "You're on the line and everything is not cycling. You go up there, 'What's wrong?' [The worker says] "Well, I'm out of parts." [Wright says] "Why don't you hit the lights? The fork driver don't know."

‘The fun part’

Is there a fun part to his job?

"The fun part..." said Wright. "I go home and say, 'I had a good day.' And got all these rejects, tuck 'em to the side, send them over to salvage. You had a good day."

He's referring to the detective work aspect to his work. It isn't enough to just pull a flawed part. You have to find out where the dent came from. What's causing it?

"You gotta find the source," Wright said. "You gotta solve the problem. Track it down from station to station."

It took three months to figure out what was putting dents into a certain lift gate.

"They finally caught up with where it was coming from," he said. A plate needed adjustment.

Machines don't stand up and admit doing something wrong — they're very much like people in that regard. Here Wright uses his experience to counteract the brashness of youngsters, who aren't averse to dropping a connection when called out on a mistake, instead of taking responsibility.

"You have to feel somebody out," Wright said. "Don't tell me your daddy works out front. That don't get you any special privileges on the floor. You have to carry your weight like everybody else."

Otherwise, the challenge is, "To come in here, and try to run some good parts, and try to get everybody to line up on the same page. A good group will let you know there's something wrong. They love this job."

60 years, same workplace

Six decades in one factory — what stands out?

Shortly after he joined, Wright said, a new hire stepped in front of a fork lift carrying a roll of steel — the driver hit the brakes, the steel rolled off the forks and killed him on the spot. He'd been there three days. That taught Wright a valuable lesson.

"I always been careful when I walk down the aisle," he said. He is surprisingly fit for a man in his mid-80s.

"I used to go to the gym all the time, LA Fitness, me and my grandson," said Wright.

His grandson worked in Chicago Stamping for a while, but was killed in a motorcycle accident. "I told him that bike was too fast for him," said Wright, who has seen his share of tragedy. His son also died. But his daughter, Libra, works for the Internal Revenue Service, having gone to Governors State University with lots of support from Ford. "They gave her a lot of money," he said.

"I said, 'Do better than I did,'" Wright remembered. "Education will get you a chance for advancement."

He is proud of his two grandchildren, one in the Navy.

There is also a pride that comes from working for one place so long. The Explorers, for instance.

"I said, 'This car come out of our plant.' It's beautiful. My daughter got one already."

Why does Wright stay? He could be living the life of leisure.

"To do something, get out of the house," he said. "Otherwise I'd go batty.

How does he know? Five years ago he took his five weeks of vacation in a single block.

"I tried it," Wright said. He didn't like it.

"Sit around, do nothing, the same thing on TV," he scoffed. "Reruns. I get tired of looking at reruns."

Ford speaks of their employees as family, and sometimes that is literally true.

"This happens to be my godfather," said Shanetta Gibbs-Cowgur, the United Auto Workers union employee support services programs representative for the plant, whose father Charles worked at Ford Stamping for 31 years. "Before I hired in, he and my dad were friends. It was guys like him who took the younger generation under their wings and showed them about safety, being able to maneuver from Job to job safely."

Wright lives in Matteson and goes to casinos for fun.

Looking back over his life, he has no regrets.

"I could have done a lot of things different," Wright said. "But you can't go back and dream of what you should or could have did. I've been fortunate."